Life hack: how to prepare plastic for recycling

Sort the plastic by grade. Usually there is a marking on the package - a triangle with a number inside. She shows, to which of the seven classes this type of plastic belongs. Packages with the numbers 1, 2, 5 or 4 are usually accepted, depending on the local waste disposal operator.

Rinse to remove food, cosmetics, and household chemicals. This will facilitate the work of the sorters and make the processing of raw materials cheaper. It is not necessary to wash containers to perfect cleanliness.

Smaller packaging. Crumple or roll up plastic bottles to release air. Press or stack containers. This way they will take up less space.

Remove all unnecessary. Be sure to remove dispensers and nebulizers - they are recycled separately. Thin cardboard or shrink wrap labels should be removed, but paper labels should not be peeled off or washed off. Rings from plastic bottles, necks from Tetra Pak packages and analogues may not be cut off, but it is better to hand over the caps separately. They are relatively small and, when sorting, can end up in waste, which is sent not for recycling, but for a landfill.

Sign the sorted packages. In order not to get confused, indicate on the packages the numbers that correspond to the class of plastic.